Twelve Essential Games for S60 Phones

Apologies for the long silence on this blog, I've had a lot of work stuff to deal with lately, but I'm back and so is this site.

To start us off again, here's a list of the games that S60 phone owners really should have (click on the name of a game to see more details about it including a video):

1. Lament Island - An absolutely beautiful Chinese 3D adventure with a bit of action thrown in too, this looks and sounds wonderful and has great puzzles, some of which involve the microphone and camera. This is a true masterpiece.

2. Sola Rola - Not actually an S60 game, but Java games work on S60 phones too, and it's so good that it deserves a place on the list. Imagine a cross between Loco Roco and Toejam & Earl, and you have Sola Rola, the story of two alien blobs who must travel across strange jelly-like landscapes solving puzzles. The learning curve is perfect, the puzzles get tough at just the right pace, and the length of each level is ideal for a phone game. Add in some amusing and well-made cutscenes and an intuitive control system, and you have possibly the best Java game ever, maybe even the best phone game ever.

3. MicroPool - Does exactly what it says on the tin, presents the player with a pool table and lets them choose which kind of game they want to play. The balls move very realistically, and look realistic too thanks to an excellent lighting system. The control method suits a phone keypad very well, it's very easy to get started on this game (though not so easy to beat the computer opponents).

4. Atlantis Redux - The new S60 3rd Edition release is the full version of the PC adventure game, and not the episodic version released a few years ago for S60 1st/2nd. AR is huge but manageable, with a good plot, interesting puzzles and a huge amount of well-scripted well-animated 3D cut scenes (30 minutes of video in total apparently, which is a lot for a phone game). If you like traditional puzzle-based adventure games then this is for you. Also see Return To Mysterious Island below.

5. Mau Mau - Simple but very addictive, this is basically Uno for S60. It's very simple to play and feels like it should be very simple to win, but of course it's not that simple. This is a great game for filling in time.

6. TibiaME - The world's first mobile phone Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), it lets you explore a massive game world alongside thousands of other real players. You can chat with other people, trade objects and go on quests together, and there are also selected areas where players can fight each other. Even on your own TibiaME is a very impressive game as it offers such a vast world to explore, full of cities, dungeons, mysterious ruins and of course monsters.

7. Flurkies - A puzzle game which is deceptively cute, Flurkies involves guiding creatures around a screen collecting coins. It has a really good learning curve that introduces the basic concepts one by one, but then becomes fiendishly difficult on the later levels. There's always a logical solution to a level, but it may take an awful lot of thought before you work it out, and there's 60 levels to work through so you get a lot of puzzles for your money with this game.

8. S-Tris 2 - It's Tetris, it's free, it's really well done. Go and get it if you like Tetris.

9. Return To Mysterious Island - From the people who did Atlantis Redux, this is another adventure game but with a much more freeform style. There are fewer cut scenes, but the game world is much bigger with far more objects and you can choose which order to tackle the puzzles in. The plot is much less strong than in AR, but it has a better graphics engine (you can look up and down as well as around) and much more complex puzzles.

10. Snakes - Nokia's completely free 3D remake of their classic Snake game, this completely reinvents the concept as a race against time to collect energy lines. The Tron-like graphics are slick and impressive, the gameplay is simple but difficult, and there are loads of levels to work through which get more and more 3D with curving surfaces and gaps in the ground that you have to steer the snake through. It's free for goodness sake, if you like arcade games and have an S60 phone then get it!

11. K-Rally - Very slick, very detailed and very playable, this is a top-down racing game with 2D "micro machines"-style gameplay but very impressive 3D graphics. The game suits a phone well, with simple controls and short races but lots of options for customising your car and lots of weapons to harm your opponents with. K-Rally is one of the best games released for S60.

12. Frozen Bubble - Freeware clone of Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move, Frozen Bubble is simple, addictive and totally free. If you like puzzle games or arcade games, this is well worth downloading.